


Still Water

by atamascolily



Series: Inheritance [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Trees, Homecoming, Relationship Negotiation, Water, Yavin 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24744574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Luke and Mara meet face to face for the first time in three months.(A coda toDesert Places.)
Relationships: Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Series: Inheritance [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/971142
Comments: 14
Kudos: 46





	Still Water

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to write this fic after frangipani recc'ed the amazing [to the sky without wings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5609887/chapters/12925093) by leupagus. Though the author's interpretations of Force trees and Star Wars is very different from mine, I was blown away by the story, writing, and characters, and I wanted to write something in my own AU exploring the same Force tree/dream motif as a way of processing the experience.

Luke Skywalker dreamed of water. 

Laboring over 'vaporators spread out over the landscape, the battered monoliths coaxing what moisture they could from the air, Luke had become intimately acquainted with water: soft patches of sand where dew beaded in the quiet hours before dawn, condensation hidden in the guts of the wheezing machines, sweat beading off his forehead and evaporating in the heat. He knew the exact weight of filled containers, the familiar gurgle as he hefted them into the speeder to ferry home, the occasional dark stain sloshing across the sand in careless moments to start the cycle all over again. The metallic aftertaste of water pulled off the south ridge was more bitter than the saltier tang of liquid from the Dune Sea, but any terroir was lost in the bland homogeny of additional filtration. Prices rose and fell in a buzzy, shifting backdrop to the endless work. Each day was a replica of the one before, with only minor variations to punctuate the monotony. 

The water in his dreams taunted him. Full tanks led to fat pockets, led more or less directly to freedom; fuzzy backgrounds in second-hand holos sprung to life, lush and fat with blooms. Endless showers and full-body soaks washed away the dust and stink, the grit swirling against the drain in the floor before it was swept away forever. _And good riddance!_

One recurring dream haunted him: his bedroom nestled beneath the wide, featureless salt pan of the Great Chott slowly filling as the ancient lake that had once been there returned after eons away. Rising waters puddled over his toes, lapped at his heels, and tugged at his shoulders, before finally closing over his head. Drowned but not dead, he floated through the whitewashed corridors, dodging the domestic debris as best he could--knowing he should struggle against the destruction, yet unable to care. 

Years later, bivouaced under distant stars with the war against the Empire raging, he still drifted through the flooded ruins of his childhood home now and then. Now he was joined by the skeletonized corpses of his aunt and uncle--grinning and waving to welcome him back with the surreal logic of the unconscious mind. 

This dream was different. Ever since Luke had transplanted two uneti seedlings in the courtyard outside the Great Temple on Yavin IV, arboreal imagery seeped into his mind at all hours without warning. Careful shielding slowed the flood to a trickle during the day, but even his strongest efforts softened as he slept, and the sensations drifted inwards into lucid, diffuse awareness. Given what other monsters lurked in his psyche, Luke did not consider this such a terrible fate. 

As Luke's acquaintance with the uneti expanded, so too did the dreams, reaching a dramatic crescendo with the discovery of a hidden grove in the Jundland Wastes only a few hundred klicks from the ruins of the Lars' farm on Tatooine. The trees were not the source of his childhood dreams, but they had opened the floodgates, so to speak. 

Now when he dreamed of water, it was not always the desert water of his youth, hard-fought and precious. It was a still pool sheltered in a redrock canyon; it was rain against feathery needles outside his window. Hidden rivers coursed under rocks; tiny capillaries threaded through the soil. Roots sank deep after them in slow but implacable pursuit, a busy array of mycorrhizae and other lifeforms too small to see with eyes alone trailing in their wake.

With the roots came an intimacy with soil, and the taste of rock and stone and humus lingering on his tongue upon waking. The weathered igneous bedrock underlaying the tropical forests of Yavin IV, black as charcoal was unmistakable; no less so than the redrock canyons of the Jundland or the soilless potting mix of the cuttings humming tunelessly to each other under the mist sprayers in the ramshackled greenhouse beyond the Great Temple. The decaying gray low-oxygen muck of the ancient elder rising out of the Dagobah swamps was the taste of Yoda's cooking in the mud-hut on rainy nights, in between dodging lizards, snakes, and the occasional thrown plate intended as a training exercise. 

Luke, woke as he always did from these dreams, with a raging thirst. Several minutes of confused blinking sorted out the necessary stimuli long enough to stagger into the 'fresher and rectify the problem, but he couldn't help a sheepish grin as he studied his reflection in the mirror. Playing host to a growing forest of sentient trees had taught him to appreciate boundaries--not to mention the miracle of his own animal body--in a way that all the push-ups and one-armed handstands under Yoda's direction ever had. 

Yoda, he thought, would appreciate the irony, how his wayward student's contact with the trees grounded him, for better or worse, in the present moment. And the crotchy little Jedi master would have liked the Jundland grove, assuming he hadn't known about them from the very beginning. Luke had learned the hard way never to make assumptions about his eccentric teacher--but he couldn't help wondering all the same. 

Luke made his way back into the living area of his quarters, clean again for the first time since the beginning of the practice period three months earlier. Meditating for twelve hours out of every day didn't leave one with much time for personal chores--especially when you were navigating through a fog of depression for the first month, and supposed to be in charge of everyone--and he'd let a lot of things slide as a result. 

But it was equally important not to get so caught up in your obligations that you neglected yourself. He'd talked a lot about personal responsibility and the importance of balance in his lectures--both before and after Tor had swept him away on an impromptu botanical expedition to Tatooine that had yielded the lost grove of uneti that had rocked Luke's life to the core. 

It was not the only unexpected discovery of the journey. Ben Kenobi's lay on the low table where Luke had left it on his return to Yavin, a metallic black dodecahedron glinting faintly in the dim light. One last unexpected gift from a teacher long gone, gone, gone beyond, wherever it was ghosts went when it was time to move on. Luke hadn't explored its contents beyond one cursory examination in the canyon where Tor found it--he'd been too distracted by other revelations at the time. 

It would take patience and time to unravel the device's secrets, especially since it had been damaged enough over the years to require slow and painstaking repairs. The holocron had waited decades for Luke to find it, he'd decided at the time. It could wait a little longer, once he'd had a chance to process all his complicated feelings about his old mentor, and prepare himself for whatever life-changing revelations might lie within. 

The uneti grove Ben had secretly planted was much less fraught, though equally complicated. The Jundland uenti were the most verbal of their species Luke had ever encountered, capable of linguistic concepts that the other uneti either didn't understand or never bother to use if they did. They knew things, too, that the others didn't. Maybe it was because there were more of them, like the hive-mind of Ithorian bafforr trees; maybe it was Ben's influence. Luke didn't know the why or how of it. But they talked. All of the time. About everything. 

To Luke's chagrin and embarrassment, they were _still_ chattering about his near-death from drowning in the deep pool that lapped at their roots. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in decades in their otherwise tranquil lives since the double eclipse, and they were not going to let it go quietly. He dreamed about that incident, too--usually from the trees' perspective, since he'd been too busy with-- 

_Mara_ , the Jundland trees supplied helpfully in his head, sensing the direction of his thoughts. _Mara, Mara, Mara_ \--

Never mind that they were light-years away in a different system and a different time zone. It was broad daylight on Tatooine, and they were wide awake and eager to "help".

And that was the _other_ legacy of his time in the desert--and the reason he'd almost drowned in the first place. The restless, roving, eager-to-please Jundland trees, lacking any human conception of time, distance, or personal space, had taken it upon themselves to forcibly link his and Mara's minds together, as a way of reconciling their differences. Luke would have been furious with them had it not, in fact, worked. 

Instead, Luke's choice to embrace the moment--to open himself up to Mara completely and confess both his failings and his love for her--had healed the rift that had sent him spiraling into depression. It had also created a connection similar to the one he shared with the uneti, one that time and distance had thus far been unable to shake. He was _aware_ of Mara in that same, effortless type of bond he shared with the trees, the intimacy he could achieve only with great effort with other beings who weren't related to him. She was a bright spark on the edge of his consciousness--burning like a beacon to guide the way home. 

Mara had been on Rodia at the time, supervising Kyp and Cilghal in their first errantry as Jedi Knights instead of attending the practice period with the other students and instructors at the Academy. Now the practie period was over, and all three of them were returning to Yavin. To the Academy. To him. 

Luke knew he ought to care about Cilghal and Kyp--and he did care, he reminded himself--but it was hard to think of anyone but Mara right now. 

_She's here_ , the uneti in the courtyard informed him, chiming in for the first time this morning. Oddly, they hadn't picked that detail from him, or from Mara herself--her ship was a shadow passing across the heavens, a fluctuation in the moon's gravity, passing from space to sky to ground like a cloud blocking the sun--here and there for a moment, and then gone. _Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes!_

Luke shook his head wryly. Who would have thought becoming a Jedi would mean a bunch of sentient trees playing matchmaker in his head? The only consolation was that Mara could hear them, too--not as well as he could, but enough to share in the amusement and the occasional misery. 

None of the students had this problem--but then most of the students weren't as deeply connected to the trees. Only Kyp Durron had ever really had an encounter with the uneti to rival Luke and Mara's, and it hadn't gone well for him. Trees didn't hold grudges--Luke had never met a less judgmental collective of beings in his life--but they didn't forget, either. And to Kyp's chagrin and despair, they also had long memories, whispered among themselves and etched in branch and wood, the very fiber of their being. 

Each group of ueti came with different personalities. The ancient tree on Dagobah was quiet and sedate, rarely instigating contact, content in the stable rhythmns spanning thousands of years. It was older than Yoda by a good two thousand years, and still going strong. How it had come to Dagobah, and Yoda's relationship with it were matters that were still unclear to Luke-- but his teacher's decision to introduce the two of them had changed his life forever and led directly to this moment. The Dagobah tree was the parent of the Yavin trees, and, like any parent, was alternately amused and befuddled by the antics of its progeny. 

The Yavin trees were more energetic, but also more biddable and compliant. They adored everyone around them on general principle (except for Kyp, with good reason), but they lavished the bulk of their attention on Luke, because he had been there at their awakening. The only person they idolized more was Tor, and she couldn't hear them directly, which meant Luke bore the brunt of their attentions. 

The Tatooine trees were especially proprietary with Luke--partly because Luke's dramatic entrance into their lives, and partly because of Ben. Luke was still fuzzy on the details, but it was clear that the uneti in the canyon loved Ben the way the Yavin uneti loved Luke; they loved Luke _because_ Ben had loved Luke. The trees had picked up on those emotions and echoed them back, decades after Ben himself had died. It was all very complicated and Luke was still sorting out all the intricacies along with his own feelings about his late mentor. Yet another reason why he hadn't unpacked Ben's holocron yet. 

Each individual cutting was tightly linked to its source tree in ways that defied Luke's understanding of independent personhood. Cuttings from the Yavin pair were barely sentient yet, content to hum tunelessly to each other and to anyone in the vicinity about their small sphere of existence. In contrast, the Tatooine cuttings were talkative and more variable, acutely aware of the Yavin rhythms, yet offset in ways that made no sense unless you knew what their progenitors on Tatooine were up to. 

It made for a riotous chorus at times, although it usually wasn't sound, but color and chiaroscuro, unexpected tastes and textures, quirks of proprioception. He'd gotten better at shielding in order to cope, as had Mara. 

Thinking of her made their bond tickle--an odd side effect he had yet to adjust to. Nothing Luke had ever found in the surviving records or even Tionne's scraps of songs and legends had hinted anything like this was possible. Unless Ben had something in the holocron about it, Luke had resigned himself to remaining in uncharted territory. 

Callista hadn't mentioned it either.

Callista--

Well. It hadn't come up in his fever-visions on the _Eye of Palpatine_ , when he was a prisoner and she was a ghost, and it definitely hadn't come up afterwards, when she was incarnated again in his student Cray's body, cut off from the Force. Now she was out there somewhere in the galaxy, alone--not because he'd wanted it that way, but because she'd chosen it. And because she'd walked away, _because_ she'd walked away, he and Mara had finally realized their feelings for each other, and--

She was here. _Now._ The bond between them writhed like a living thing, then steadied, a drum on the edge of consciousness. She'd just landed on Yavin. 

Luke let out a long breath, pushed away the fears lapping at his chest, inviting in calm. 

Nothing to do but go and meet her. 

***

It was almost dawn, but no was one up yet except for Corran, stumbling around the communal kitchen in desperate search of caf before getting started on the breakfast porridge. Now that they were no longer on the practice period schedule, everyone else was taking advantage of the extra hour of sleep before morning meditation. 

Luke waited for the three returning Jedi at the edge of the landing field, a dozen meters from where the _Hunter's Luck_ had settled down. Now that the rainy season was finally over, it was possible to park outside in the open air instead of using the old Rebel hangar on the ground level of the Great Temple. 

Kyp and Cilghal came first, laughing softly to each other as they strode side by side, their lightsabers dangling at their hips over their rust-brown robes. They were easy and affectionate with each other in a way that belied the awkward xenophobia of their first encounters--colleagues and comrades in arms, strengthened by their three months of partnership as well as two years of daily practice. Even without his connection to Mara, Luke would have known that their first errantry as newly minted Jedi Knights on Rodia had gone without a hitch from their body language alone. 

"Master Skywalker," Cilghal said, her gravelly voice rolling over the consonants like a wave casting pebbles along a beach. 

Kyp was a half-second echo behind her. "Did we miss breakfast?" he added, unable to contain his grin. 

Luke chuckled. "I should have known that was all _you'd_ cared about," he said, hugging them both. "Welcome back, you two. Glad to see you safe and in one piece," he said. "And no, Kyp, Corran has barely started getting porridge together--" 

Kyp scrunched up his face in mock-disgust. "Oh, it's Horn's turn to cook? Guess I'm not hungry after all..." 

"Now, now," Cilghal said, "Jedi Halcyon's cooking is perfectly adequate for our nutritional needs." That was Corran's current _nom de guerre_ , which Luke frequently forgot to use. 

"Yes, but what about _taste_ , Cilghal?" her partner demanded "What about _presentation_?" 

"Overrated and reserved for state dinners and official functions," Cilghal said, waving away her partner's objections with her unflappable calm from her years as a diplomat. "I recommend swallowing it whole if it offends you. I don't understand the fuss, since gruel does not require much mastication in the first place--" 

"Go on, you two, and get yourselves settled," Luke said, before the discussion could get technical. "We'll have the official welcoming ceremony later this morning. In the meantime, I'm sure Corran would appreciate help if you offered it," he added, doubting that was true, but figuring it was worth a try. 

He was proud of them both--and Mara, too, for taking on the unenviable task of whipping a repentant Kyp back into shape after his flirtations with the dark side. She'd done an excellent job, much better than Luke would have under the circumstances, and they both knew it. 

Wrapped in her teaching robes, Mara drifted a few feet behind her students without saying a word until she and Luke were alone. He'd expected that much, even without the bond. The last time they'd stood face to face, she'd broken his nose. 

To be fair, Luke had deserved it. He'd battered down her mental walls, rifled through her memories without her consent, blinded by jealousy and grief and rage when she'd announced her departure mere hours after his final conversation with Callista. He'd violated her boundaries, and she'd fought back, reclaiming them by decking him to the floor of the training dojo, leaving him broken and bleeding in her wake. It was of one Luke's most agonizing memories, and he'd deserved every bit of the pain that followed. 

Even knowing how she felt about him now, even with the bond vibrating between them like an electric charge, it was impossible to steady his nerves as she approached. 

Should they hug? Shake hands? He wanted to rush her, wrap her in his arms and never let go, but he didn't dare make the first move, not after what had happened before. Let her set the pace this time. Let her decide what she was and wasn't comfortable with. 

_Whatever happens, don't let her leave me again._

As if hearing his thought, she stopped short, just out of reach. He met her steady, inscrutable gaze directly, and they stared at each other for a long time in silence. A faint breeze threaded through the branches of the Yavin uneti, but all else was quiet inside and outside his head. 

Finally, Mara shifted. "Luke," she said softly. 

"Mara." His heartbeat quickened. He spread his arms in open invitation. "Welcome home." 

She moved quickly, closing the gap between them in an instant, her head pillowed into his shoulder as his arms closed around her. They stood together, drinking in the weight and pressure of the contact--so different and yet so similar from the link in their minds. No words were necessary. 

In the distance, a woolamander howled, announcing the start of a new day The dawn chorus would begin in any minute, as more creatures joined in, but the call faded and all was quiet again. Even the Tatooine uneti were hushed, waiting. 

"I missed you," Luke said at last, when he could speak again. She knew it, and he knew she knew it, but it didn't matter. He needed to say it aloud just as much as she needed to hear it. 

Mara managed a shaky laugh as she began carefully disentangled herself from him. "Me, too. Though I can't imagine _why_." 

"There's no accounting for taste," Luke agreed, not offended in the least. 

She let go of everything except his right hand--the synthflesh one that could tolerate the kind of pressure she was putting on it. He squeezed her hand back, and she let up with a start, realizing how tightly she'd clung to him. 

"The uneti missed you, too," he added, because it was true. Never mind that they were in her head just as much as Luke's these days. 

"You're a bad influence, you know," Mara said, which was also probably true. "But let's go and pay our respects, shall we?" 

They walked hand in hand to the courtyard to the two Yavin uneti. The pair was a study in contrasts--one tall and straight and limber, one short and thick and bulky with stems launching forth in every direction to grasp the light. The difference was Kyp's handiwork; though the trees were polite enough not to complain, Luke could tell neither of them were happy about the younger Jedi's return to the jungle moon. 

"Hi," Mara said, brushing her free hand against the trunk of the taller specimen, her fingers tangling in the rough, thick bark. "I came back. You can stop hounding Luke about me now." 

It took a while for the uneti to process this, but the response, when it came, was unequivocal joy. The rains came, the rains left, the sun and moons and gas giant rose and set overhead, roots wiggled through the dirt, and all was well, all was well, all were _home_ \--

"Yeah, okay," Mara said out loud, trying to sound tough, but Luke could feel her on the verge of weeping, even before the first tear spilled from her eyes. She'd never had a home before, he knew. Not with Palpatine, and not after his death either. Not like this. 

Luke had brought Callista here once, hoping that she would be able to reach the uneti the way he could. But despite the best efforts of humans and trees alike, that part of his life remained firmly out of reach. The uneti were a part of Luke's life she could never share--and Callista had known it and grieved it. Had left, rather than let regret and jealousy poison her any further, send her tumbling down the path to the dark side. 

He hoped she had found her own path out there, wherever she was right now. He hoped she had found the peace that had eluded her here. 

"You still love her, don't you?" Mara said, jolting him back to the present as she pushed a loose strand of hair away from his face.

Luke flushed. No point in trying to hide it. Not from _her_. "Yes." 

"Unsurprising," was Mara's verdict. "Doesn't take much. You love _everybody_." 

Relief washed over him at her matter-of-fact tone. "You're not mad?" 

Mara shrugged. "It's a part of who you are. Part of the whole package. And it's... kind of endearing, that you fall in love so easily and so deeply." A pause. "I'm... almost jealous." 

Coming from Mara--skeptical to the core--that was a deep and vulnerable admission. "Thank you," he whispered, awed once again by her trust in him. 

"In some ways, she was a better match for you than I am. A Jedi from the Old Republic--" 

"No," Luke said, cutting her off. "That doesn't matter." Not that he'd been able to persuade Callista _or_ Mara of that. "What matters is that she chose to leave. And you"--he choked up--"chose to return." 

"Yeah..." she sighed. "I did. I need to have my head examined." 

"I can arrange that--" 

"No, really," she protested. "Maybe I got brain damage from passing out in the marketplace when you-- _ambushed_ me--"

He hadn't meant to--he'd been swept along in the wake of the Jundland uneti, who hadn't taken no for an answer--but there were no point in arguing. "Cilghal said you were fine." 

"True. She's quite thorough," Mara agreed. "But not infallible. None of us are." 

Luke didn't know what to say to that. 

"Well, I was crazy to come out here in the first place when you first asked me to teach, but this job--and you--have grown on me, and getting away is harder than I thought," Mara said at last. "And who knows? She might return someday, too, you know"--meaning Callista. 

"She won't," Luke said firmly, wondering at the source of his confidence. A hunch? Some glimmer of prescience? The look in Callista's eyes before she walked away for the last time? "And if she does, it won't be for a long time. We'll be different people then. We already are. It just took me a lot longer to figure that out than she did. And now--" 

What had happened with Mara had changed him--had changed her, had changed _both_ of them irretrievably. Even if she turned away from him, too--he couldn't go back to the way he had been before. 

He didn't want Mara to leave him, too. But if that was her choice, at least this time, he knew better than to try and stop her--

She showed him what she thought of _that_ notion, yanking his head down towards hers for a long, involved kiss that sent all his nerves ablaze. The uneti perked up, intrigued by the novelty of animal sensations, and started whispering amongst themselves. 

"So what happens next?" he asked, when they finally came up for air. 

"I don't know. I was going to ask you that... But I think we don't have to rush. We can take it slow." 

Emotions leaks through her shields into the bond--how deeply she felt for him, and how much that scared her. Luke had to agree with her on that. They'd skipped over all the usual getting-to-know-you steps when the trees had smashed their minds together. They were both still feeling their way through this unexpected closeness. 

And as much as impatience and lust chafed at him, skipping ahead to the so-called best part didn't make sense, especially when it meant missing so many other firsts. Still... 

"Does that mean you're not moving in with me?" 

Mara swatted playfully at his face. "I didn't say that. But you do realize that's the opposite of 'taking it slow', right?" 

"All right, since moving in with me is off the table, how about breakfast in the refectory?" Luke offered. "Everyone will be delighted to see you again, and pester you and Kyp and Cilghal with questions about Rodia and which of them you'll be taking on next, until you chase them away long enough for us to snag a table to ourselves. Then after the welcoming ceremony, you can look over the accounts and tell me all the mistakes I made while you were away. I'll listen attentively and vow to do better in the future, even though we both know I'll fail miserably and there's no point in even bothering. I don't understand your filing system." 

"That's because you're hopeless idealist with your head in the clouds," she teased. "But breakfast sounds good. Not to mention a bath." _With you_ , she didn't have to say, the image one of the private hot springs usually reserved for paying guests appearing in his mind. 

Luke's mouth went dry. "What happened to taking it slow?"

"You could look but not touch, Skywalker--" 

He made it clear what he thought of _that_ notion, just as Corran Horn rounded the corner in a spattered apron, an empty compost bin tucked under his arm. 

"Oi, Mara, nice to see you again," Corran said, once he'd recovered from his coughing fit. "Glad you're back to keep this idiot in line. Next time, wait until you're in your quarters before tearing each others' clothes off, okay?" 

Mara eyed him pointedly. "I know from Mirax you've had your share of _in flagrante delicto_. There was that one time on the _Errant Venture_ where--" 

Corran turned a fetching shade of crimson. "The only thing worse than you two not realizing things... is you two realizing things," he muttered, unable to meet their eyes. 

"Thanks for that vote of confidence," Luke said. "Sounds like you're volunteering to run the Academy while Mara and I enjoy a much-needed vacation together." 

Corran made a strangled squawk of protest and Luke grinned; teasing him was too easy. "Just kidding," he said. "Kam and Tionne have everything under control. We'll see you at breakfast." 

Corran got the hint and fled with what was left of his dignity. 

"What's Tor up to these days?" Mara said when she had finally stopped laughing. "I'm surprised she wasn't with you." 

"On her way back to Sawarra now. She's taken some the uneti cuttings with her for safekeeping back at the university there." He could hear those cuttings, too, but they were dormant now, and too fixated on the botanist to bother him much. "The rest are here in the greenhouse with Streen looking after them while she's gone." 

"What are you going to do with all of them?" Mara asked. "Let them take over the Temple grounds?" 

"Hardly. Once they've rooted, Kirana Ti will plant a few on Dathomir in the Singing Mountain clan's territory, near the site of our future outpost." Co-ed, of course, which was a novelty in itself on Dathomir, and the source of many, many headaches. "As for the others... we'll figure something out." 

"I've never been to Dathomir," Mara said thoughtfully. "I wonder if I would like it there." 

"You'd like it. I could show you around," Luke volunteered. He didn't say, _We can go anywhere you want,_ but she heard it all the same. 

She waved the suggestion away. "Maybe later. Right now, I just want to be here. With you. But Corran was probably right about retreating to your quarters before we scandalize anyone else's delicate sensibilities." 

They made their way to Luke's suite hand in hand, Luke reeling from the contact as if he were drunk on an entire keg of Whyren's Reserve. His shields wobbled, and for a second, he wasn't just Luke, he was Luke-and-Mara, two people at once as the bond amplified the sensations in a series of feedback loops. Like with the trees, but _human_ \-- 

"Easy, farmboy," Mara said, pulling him back when he stumbled in the doorframe. "Tone it down a bit, will you?" 

She was right. He pulled himself together and concentrated; with the shields restored, the sensations eased. The bond was still there, but--quieter. Muted. 

"This is going to take some getting used to," he said. 

"Tell me about it," Mara sighed, then caught sight of the low table. "What's this?" 

"That's the holocron from Ben I told you about," Luke said, nudging it with his free hand as they settled on the cushions beside the table. 

"You still haven't looked at it?" 

"No time during the practice period," he said. 

She glared at him. "That's not the reason and you know it." 

Fear caught in his throat and it was an effort to get the words out. "What if I learn something I don't want to know?" he gasped. "What if this--" he waved a hand to incorporate the entire room, the two of them leaning against each other, and by extension the bond between them"--is forbidden? What if romantic relationships aren't the Jedi way?" 

Mara dropped her shields slightly, her warmth and sympathy spreading through him like a balm. "We've made it this far without an instruction manual, Luke. And we decided long ago, before the first student, that we would learn from the past where we could, but we'd forge our own way. As a certain Jedi Knight reminded me, it's all right to let go of the past sometimes." 

Oh, the irony of quoting his words back to him. But it was all right for her to school him now; she knew that lesson far, far better than he did. She'd let go of the Empire, let go of Palpatine, left so much of her past behind to start over. With him. And now it was time for him to do the same. 

She leaned over to kiss him, only Luke knew what she was going to do before she did it, and they met halfway. 

"So what's this about a vacation? Or were you kidding about that, too?" Mara said at last when they'd exhausted themselves, her head against his shoulder again as they sprawled against the cushions, the holocron forgotten. 

"You and I _are_ taking a trip together," he said firmly. "Somewhere nice. Just the two of us." 

Mara eyed him skeptically. "You know we _live_ in a vacation destination. Our entire business model revolves around it. We could just put a lock on the door of one of the private hot springs, and--" 

"A _different_ kind of vacation," Luke went on, undeterred by the logic, appealing as it was. "Someplace where no one knows who we are and wants our help with anything." 

"Sounds like you already have a place in mind."

He'd spent a decent chunk of the last two months daydreaming about it when he was supposed to be meditating. "The Mulako comet is approaching perihelion, and has been transformed into the galaxy's most exclusive resorts--even more selective about its clientele than we are. The climate heats up, enough of the volatiles evaporate from the ice to form a breathable atmosphere, and people can live inside the snowball. It's very unusual. An entire world of primordial water." 

Mara wrinkled her noise. "You and your obsession with water. You are such a _nerd_ , you know that, right?" 

"Part of my charm," Luke agreed. " _And_ it'll give all the students something to talk about when we run off together."

"The trees are already bad enough." Mara glared at the trees, who were listening at the edges of the mental barrier she and Luke had erected to keep arboreal interference to minimum. The cutting shrank back, the Tatooine grove was intrigued, the Yavin trees were puzzled.

The great tree on Dagobah stirred. _Young ones,_ it said with a weary sigh, and faded into the distant mists. 

"We'll figure it out," Luke said, taking both her hands in his again. "After all, we have a whole lifetime."

"Together," Mara said softly in his ear. 

_Together_ , one of the Jundland uneti said, only to be hissed and booed by its fellows as Luke closed the "door" firmly in all their faces. 

_Sorry, friends, no distance, no separation, but-- *this*, you don't need to see._

_You show 'em, farmboy_ , Mara said in his head. 

And Luke knew that his dreams that night would ring with sound of her laughter over flowing water.

**Author's Note:**

> Luke's lines about the Mulako comet are borrowed from _Darksaber_ , by Kevin J. Anderson.


End file.
